Sophia

This morning, Kurt went into Sophia’s room, as he always does, to wake her up. She doesn’t like to be woken up and this goes better for all involved if it’s a gradual process. So as a first step he goes in and turns on the bathroom light and perhaps says something to her in a quiet voice. Five or ten minutes later he comes in and turns on her bedroom light, and if she seems ready begins to change and dress her, or else just speaks to her a little more. He tells her it’s time to get up and that sleep time is over and so forth. This morning he’d followed all those steps and she was wailing that she didn’t want to get up, so he left her for another couple mintues with all the lights on. On his return, he discovered that she’d climbed out of bed, turned off her bedroom light and gotten back into bed. This astonishes me and makes me giggle. She was determined not to get up.

This was all possible due to the fact that last week Sophia started using a big girl’s bed, which she can climb into and out of by herself. We bought two mattresses, in anticipation of getting a bunk bed a couple of years down the road, and stacked them and lo! bed. We had looked at several children’s beds, and it just seemed like they were too tall for her. Sophia is not exactly physically adventurous and she is easily intimidated by having to climb. We wanted her bed to be a comforting and comfortable place. It worked beyond our wildest expectations. She loves her bed. Every time she walks into her room she shouts “Look! It’s Sophia’s big girl’s bed,” takes a running start and then leaps up onto it. She tells me “C’mon, mama, let’s get on Sophia’s big girl’s bed!” and I go over there and join her. She starts jumping up and down excitedly. For a couple of days she kept telling Kurt and myself to jump up and down on it as well, but we insisted to her that we were too big to jump on her bed, so now she says “Mama jump on the bed!” followed by a sly smile and, “Naaaaaaaaah, it’s too big for mama!”

Part of what made moving her to a regular bed so easy is that while she was at Kurt’s parents over Christmas she slept in a regular bed with Kelly every night. She loved that and was so proud of herself for sleeping in a big bed and we celebrated it, of course.

The first weekend she slept in the bed (we set it up her for on Thursday night of last week), she fell out of it, but since it’s just two mattresses and the floor is not far, she didn’t really hurt herself. Kurt went in to see about her because she was crying. She said she’d fallen out and Kurt asked her if she wanted him to put her back in the bed and she said yes. She’d walked around to the end of the bed where her stepstool was, so he thinks maybe she was in the process of climbing back in by herself when he came in (not that she needs the stepstool to get on it, she just uses it sometimes when she’s not feeling as confident). She went right back into the bed and right back to sleep, so the inevitable fall has already come and no trauma resulted. We are pleased that she has done so well and that no railings or anything appear to be needed.

This past weekend we were treated to Sophia coming into our room as soon as she’d woken up. In the past she has just called to us or started talking or even just lain quietly until we’ve gone to get her out of the crib. It’s really sweet to see her come running in, carrying one of her animals. On one of the days she climbed into bed with me and snuggled up to me. She told me she’d slept in her big girl bed. I asked her if she liked it and she said she had. She put her feet up against my skin and I told her that her feet were cold. She told me yes, because she’d been playing in the snow, and that then she’d seen rudolph the red-nosed reindeer at grandma’s. I think she must have been retelling her dreams to me, which I find really exciting. I can’t wait to hear more of her night time adventures.

Her transition to a regular bed meets half of our requirements for her before the baby comes. We wanted the crib free for the baby, so we wanted her in a regular bed. The other thing we want is for her to be potty trained and out of diapers. That’s going less well. She understands the procedure and knows when she needs to go, but she’s just not terribly willing to do it. We’ve been indulgent and patient with her so far, but I’m not sure how long that’s going to last.

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This morning Sophia woke up and started kicking at the bars of her crib, which she always does when she’s just woken up. Kurt went into her room and said,”Who’s that making noise? Are you noisy?”

“NO! I’m Sophia!” announced Sophia.

He took her out of the crib and told her,”Mama’s in the bed.” I could see her stumbling over her doorstep and running towards me. She was wearing a hand me down nightgown that makes her look like she’s a character from Little House on the Prairie. It’s flannel and warm and looks totally adorable on her. She climbed up into bed and got under the covers with me. I hugged her close.

“Did you sleep well? Did you have good dreams?”

“Good dreams,” she echoed.

I wonder what she dreams about.

“I’m awake!” she added.

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This morning I had some mail to put out, so Sophia and I walked to the mailbox at the end of the driveway to put the letters in. It was bitterly cold and the wind was blowing rather emphatically and Sophia said ,”It’s cold, so I have my jacket on.” and I agreed that jackets were good things to have when it was cold. We put the letters in the new mailbox (our old one fell over last week and Kurt replaced it) and the wind blew even more strongly and I rushed up the driveway telling Sophia to hurry so we could get in the car and out of the wind. When I climbed into the back seat to buckle her up into the car seat, I noticed that her eyes were watering. I guess she doesn’t know enough about being in the wind to duck down her head a little and was just letting the wind blow straight at her face the whole walk back to the car. For some reason, I found this very sweet.

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Oh the things I could tell you about Sophia! I’m afraid I won’t be able to remember all the memorable things she’s done in the past couple of months since I’ve done a really thorough entry on her. She is growing so much, so quickly. Most noticeably, she is taller. Everyone says so. She talks all the time, about all sorts of things. She’s still fast-mapping words, adopting the ones we tell her instantly, effortlessly and without the repetition and reinforcement that was required when she was younger. More astonishingly, she appears to be picking up whole sentences and phrases. A couple of nights ago she was in the kitchen with Kurt and myself and we were having a conversation about database structure. I said “Kurt, I have a question for you about databases.” We were talking a bit, engrossed in discussion of tables and normalization and so forth when suddenly Sophia who’d been quietly playing with her “unicorn-horse” pipes up.

“Mama. Mama. Mama.”

“Yes, Sophia.”

“I have a question for you.”

“You do? Well, what’s your question?”

A pause. She makes her thinking face. We wait.

“Sophia!” she exclaims suddenly.

It seems a small thing, that she could hear and perfectly mimic a phrase she doesn’t fully understand, but she does this all the time. We’re hip deep into the be careful what you say because she’ll parrot it phase. She’s learning nursery rhymes and songs at an astonishing rate. I couldn’t believe it the other day when I heard her singing along with “London Bridge”, saying “build it up with wood and clay, wood and clay, wood and clay”. Those were lyrics I’d more or less forgotten were in the song. I’ve no idea whether she knows what wood and clay are, or even what a bridge is, but she can sure talk and sing about them. She’s started pointing out shapes everywhere. She talks about ovals and triangles and squares the way she talked about colors a couple of months ago. She’s mastering that things don’t just have names, they also have characteristics, they can have a shape, a color and be contrasted to other things.

Last night, when I came home, Sergei got a little over excited and plowed into her. Knocked her clean over. Predictably, though she was not hurt at all, she started crying and finger pointing. Sergei had done it, she sobbed as I picked her up and carried her to the couch. I told her I knew that he’d knocked her over because I’d seen him do it, and that it probably didn’t feel too good. Kurt made Sergei down, stay and then informed Sophia that he was in time-out. She was delighted by this, and proceeded to tell him exactly why he was in time-out.

Sergei, you’re in right time-out. You don’t knock Sophia over. You’re in time-out!”

I don’t know why it’s “right time-out”. I think maybe at daycare they put people in time-out “right now” and that’s her agglomeration of what they say, but I think “right time-out” is pretty funny, myself.

After a few moments, Kurt explained that Sergei was sorry and that he was ready to be good and so he was coming out of time-out. Sophia, feeling justice had been done, told Sergei “You sorry? I sorry. Everything’s all right.”

The thing is, she tells us things. What she’s thinking, how she feels, what she likes or doesn’t like. I love that.

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So on Sunday night we were all sitting in the living room watching the Women’s Soccer Team fail to make the finals and Sophia had just spent 20 minutes climbing on, hugging tightly, screaming with glee at and generally chasing the dog, Sergei, and was ready for a change of pace. She went over to her table and sat down. To her dismay, however, Oz was taking up a not inconsiderable portion of her tabletop with his bulk. She poked him once or twice and, in general, this works to get Oz moving, as he doesn’t particularly like to be close to the center of toddle action. However, once in a great while, he gets his hackles up and decides that he was there first (at the spot and in the household) and any and all other pets, including the human one, can just take a hike. This was one of those occasions, and instead of taking himself elsewhere, he turned his head and gave her a low growling meow. A warning. Hearing this, I looked over at the situation. “Sophia, Oz is warning you. Leave him alone. If you are not nice to him, he will scratch you.” Let her learn consequences, I thought. Let her figure out that Oz is not to be messed with. She looked over at Oz consideringly. She stood up, backed up a pace or two and in her lowest growliest voice started to berate him.

“You better not, Oz! You know better than that. Oz! You know better than that.”

After a couple of iterations of this Kurt turned to me, “Do you say that to her?” I nodded guiltily. “Yes, yes I do.”

A couple more iterations of “You know better than that, Oz!” and I decided I had to do something.

“Sophia?”

She turned to me.

“Are you trying to make Oz feel bad?”

I hadn’t the heart to tell her it wouldn’t work.

This morning, I was preparing my lunch and Sophia had wandered into the living room. In a moment I heard the wail of slight pain. If you’re a parent you know what I mean. This is not the wail of genuine extreme pain, but more the I need attention because something just didn’t go the way I wanted it to and I may be slightly uncomfortable about what just happened or some physical result of what just happened but kisses will fix it and no journeys to the ER will need to be made. So I wait for Sophia to drag herself into the kitchen, producing copious dramatic tears and wailing “I did it, I did it.” I crouch to her level.

“You did what?”

“I did iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurt.”

“Where are you hurt?”

“Oz did it.”

Oh! Oz did it. I get it now.

“Awww sweetie, did Oz hurt you?”

“Oz hurt you.”

I hug her and pick her up, carrying her to the couch.

“Did Oz scratch you a little bit?”

“Scratch me a little bit.”

Kisses are delivered. Tears dry. Oz is sitting quietly on top of Sophia’s train set, a place which both cats love for reasons that escape me and looking supremely unconcerned. I examine Sophia for scratches but find none, and assume that Oz did the right thing and batted her with no claws and the aggression of his action is what scared her, not any actual scratching on his part.

Sophia clambers down. She looks over at Oz. She looks at me.

“Mama, touch Oz!” she tells me.

“You want me to touch Oz?” I’m wondering about her angle here. Does she think he’ll strike me and be able to show me how mean he is? Does she want to reconcile with Oz through me, and is too scared just yet to do it herself? I make a big show of sitting next to Oz and letting him sniff my fingers for a moment. She moves in close and watches avidly. I touch his head.

“Be gentle, mama!” She warns me.

“I’m being gentle. We’re always gentle with Oz,” I say as I pet him and he closes his eyes happily. Sophia watches, smiling. I think she may have wanted me to roleplay her petting Oz the right way, while she played the adult who gave instructions on how to treat the cat. It may also have been her way of making up with him over their disagreement. I’m not sure.

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On Sunday night Sophia was sitting on the couch playing with assorted stuffed animals, beanie babies and the favored lego penguin. I was sitting on the couch across from her doing not much of anything at all and very much enjoying it. Out of the blue, she set her animals down and said to me, “Ok, mama, I’m going to be right back.” She then proceeded to clamber down from the couch, walk into the kitchen, wait about two hearbeats, then turn around and come back into the living room, exclaiming “I came back!”

“I see that. You came right back, just like you said you would.”

She smiled, crawled back onto the couch and resumed where she’d left off. I can only assume this is a mimicking of our saying to her, so often, that we’re just going to another room for this or that and we’ll be right back.

Yesterday morning Sophia came into my bedroom as I was dressing. She climbed up on the bed.

“Mama,” she informed me,”Steve found a clue.”

A couple of moments while I register what she’s talking about. Oh yes, Blue’s Clues, I’m right there with you, child.

“Steve did find a clue, didn’t he?”

“Steve found a clue outside.”

“Did Sophia find a clue also?” I ask. I’m curious about her sense of participation in the program. She does talk to the tv some during Blue’s Clues, and I wonder if she feels that she too is actively finding the clues. In the past when I’ve asked her about Steve finding clues and where this happens she’s always told me impatiently that all this happens “on the teebee”.

“Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo,” she drawls with a sly grin, as if I’ve just made the funniest joke, “Sophia didn’t find a clue.”

Then, as if realizing the game potential in this exchange, she looks around the room and asks me, “Did Sergei find a clue?”

He’s sitting over by the window. I look over at him and say, “Noooooooooooooooooooooo, Sergei didn’t find a clue,” as if the idea of it were absurd.

She laughs. Looks over at the cat. “Did Oz-” pause, furrowed brow,”Rorschach,” she corrects herself,”find a clue?”

Completely charmed, I smile and say my part,”Nooooooooooooooooooo, Rorschach didn’t find a clue, silly billy.”

Giggles. Then, bright eyed, one more question, “Did Steve find a clue?”

“Yes!” I reply. “Steve found a clue!”

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Ms. Jennifer, Sophia’s daycare teacher related the following story about the day’s events to my husband when he picked Sophia up yesterday afternoon. It was nap time. Ms. Jennifer laid out all the mats on which the kids normally rest and told them to lie down on them. A number of kids did so. Sophia, however, went over to her mat, folded it up quite neatly, brought it to Ms. Jennifer and said “No, thank you.”

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It is a great joy to me that I can now talk with Sophia. I can ask her questions, like whether she’d prefer this or that, whether she’s enjoying something, and whether she’s happy. She’s beginning to use complete sentences, though her favored terrain is still phrases. Yesterday, a full and perfect sentence came out of her and blew me away.

We come in the front door. Sophia has lingered in the foyer, playing with the door that leads from the foyer into the living room. She is closing and opening it, not quite fully, it is never quite catching, but she is still going through the motions of opening and closing the door. I smile at her and say hello, goodbye a couple of times as she plays with the door. Then I hear the tell-tale click of the door latching securely shut. I wait to see if her practice has paid off. I hear her rattling the knob a bit.

“Would you like some help?” I call through the closed door.

“No. I do it.”

“Alright.” I move away and start to go about my business.

The knob turns this way and that, and I feel like she almost has the door open, but she’s not pulling toward herself when she’s turning, so nothing much happens. The knob goes still. I wait.

“Mama?” A casual inquiry, without fear.

“Yes, Sophia?”

“Can you open the door, please?”

“Of course, Sophia. I’d be happy to.”

I walk over and open the door. She strolls out unconcernedly, off to play with something else. I grin, filled with parental pride and the sheer joy of hearing her talk.

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